Seniors Get Connected To The Web

SUNRISE — -- Forget teenage Web jockeys and 30-year-old techno gurus. Seniors rule the T1 lines at Broward County's Dan Pearl Library, where unlocking the doors can unleash a floodgate of gray-haired patrons, dashing to log on to their e-mail.

On Tuesdays when the library opens at 1 p.m., "They just run to try to get to the computers," Youth Services Librarian Elizabeth Prior said.

E-mail is the biggest draw, though seniors also surf the Internet on eight of the library's terminals.

Sunrise grandmother Dorothy Lesem, a retired dental hygienist in her late 70s, introduced herself to computers more than a year ago.

Now Lesem e-mails her daughter Joy, 52, and granddaughter, Jennifer, 13, in Pennsylvania, from the library's free e-mail system. She visits the library five days a week, writing quick e-mails between a busy schedule of line dancing, golf and bowling.

Lesem and her family talk regularly on the phone about the big events in their lives. But it's the smaller, more intimate details that filter into e-mail: asparagus prices, new snow, her granddaughter's 9-pound haul of Halloween candy.

"You really don't talk about things like that when you speak on the phone twice a week," Lesem said.

Sunrise Lakes resident Al Abrams, 79, is a self-proclaimed computer novice. He started using the library's e-mail system six months ago to correspond with friends and family members.

Abrams said he has no use for surfing the Internet. He gets all the information he needs from the newspaper and other more traditional information sources. But he said he corresponds more frequently with friends now that he has e-mail.

It doesn't take any great technological expertise to use computers and e-mail, Abrams and other seniors say. It just takes interest.

"If people are interested in it, they'll do it if they're older or younger," he said.

Statistics show interest is growing among seniors.

A recent Nielsen study estimates 19 percent of the computer users online nationally are older than 50. Jupiter Communications of New York, which monitors online computer use, estimates the number of users older than 50 has increased from 3.8 million using the Internet in 1995 to 13.6 million today.

"I just think we sort of guessed wrong when we said this is a thing for the youth," Miller said.

Some of the library's cyberseniors come from down the street, where Bea Swart, 72, of Tamarac, teaches a computer class for seniors at Daniel D. Cantor Senior Center in Sunrise. Classes are also offered at the north and south regional libraries or the main library in Fort Lauderdale.

About 1,000 seniors a year attend Swart's classes. Some come on their own. Others are prodded by family members.

"Most of them want to get on it right away to talk to their grandchildren," she said. "I think it's just made them open to the world, where they can communicate" not just with their children but with other seniors.

Christy McKerney can be reached at cmckerney@sun-sentinel.com, or 954-572-2008.